Does Communicative Language Teaching Help Develop Students’ Competence in Thinking Critically?

Critical thinking is one of the non-subject related learning goals which students are expected to develop at higher educational institutions. Language teachers are also aware that critical thinking should be developed in teaching languages, but how do they incorporate critical thinking in language teaching? The majority of language teachers use Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and this study focuses on critical thinking and CLT to investigate if CLT covers the necessary skills to develop students’ critical thinking. This study starts with the background information on CLT which is followed by the definition of culture and critical thinking. The definition of culture was used as this study uses culture as a medium to investigate CLT and critical thinking. The study’s method involves two stages. Firstly, using the Hofstede et al.’s (2010) educational culture as an instrument, the underlying pedagogies were identified for CLT and critical thinking. Secondly, these underlying pedagogies were compared and similarities and differences are discussed. The conclusion is that CLT and critical thinking share the majority of underlying pedagogies and educational culture. In other words, language teachers can teach languages and also develop critical thinking using CLT. However, it was revealed that the underlying pedagogy of independence was not included in CLT. The implication for language teachers is focused on how language teachers can supplement independence during their teaching. It was suggested that teachers should think of the long term benefit for students and give them the opportunity to think for themselves during the class instead of giving students answers.